A spot for me to blog on life in my garden, where I grow things, read things, drink tea and ponder. An important principle for me is living a simple life - to live simply so that others may simply live

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Saturday, June 3, 2017

Son of a spy?

For the Australian audience, there's no need to introduce Mark Colvin. But do other readers know this man? his voice? his story?

A few years after joining the ABC in 1974, journalist Mark Colvin
visited his father in Washington DC. Mark thought his father John was a
senior diplomat in the British embassy.
His father took him aside, swore him to secrecy and informed his son that since the 1940s he’d been a spy working for MI6 (reference)

Light and Shadow begins with a tour de force of chapters, vivid
in detail and beautifully paced, about Colvin’s first posting to London
in 1980 and the dash to Tehran to cover the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Colvin hits the ground running, taking readers into the mayhem. (reference)

Mark
Colvin joined the ABC as a cadet in 1974. He was the first presenter of
The World Today and worked for Four Corners for five years. After five
years as London correspondent for the ABC, interrupted by six months in
hospital with a life threatening disease, he returned to Australia as
presenter of PM in 1997, a job he has continued to do despite three
years on dialysis and a successful kidney transplant. - See more at:
https://www.mup.com.au/items/198595#sthash.GUEEJubv.dpuf

I've just started this book, but Im loving it. I think mostly because Mark was such a big part of my growing up and learning about the events of the world through his reporting.

1 comment:

I don't know Mark Colvin but this book sounds fascinating and something that would be exactly my kind of thing. Thanks for sharing about it. I am going to see if I can find it at any of our stores here.